Regarding:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-wg/2002Jul/0199.html
I enthusiastically agree (with the last paragraph).
Yet this doesn't break current RDF/XML files.
Several examples:
<ex:Example rdf:ID="foo">
<ex:property>10</ex:property>
</ex:Example>
-> "10" as a string
<ex:Example rdf:ID="foo2">
<ex:property xsi:type="xsd:decimal">10</ex:property>
</ex:Example>
-> 10 the integer
(this idiom shouldn't exist in the wild as yet, and if it does exist,
the intention is to do exactly as above)
Perhaps:
<ex:Example rdf:ID="foo3">
<ex:property rdf:parseType="xsd:decimal">10</ex:property>
</ex:Example>
which doesn't require changes to the RDF/XML syntax! Indeed the
rdf:parseType can exactly be considered a particular mapping from a
lexical to value space.
Jonathan